‘This Is How Hamas Is Seeing This’

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here are two thoughts I believe need to be held at once: Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 was heinous, murderous and unforgivable, and that makes it more, not less, important to try to understand what Hamas is, how it sees itself and how it presents itself to Palestinians. Tareq Baconi is the author of “Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance,” one of the best books on Hamas’s rise and recent history. He’s done extensive work interviewing members of Hamas and mapping the organization’s beliefs and structure. In this conversation, we discuss the foundational disagreement between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization, why Hamas fought the Oslo peace process, the “violent equilibrium” between Hamas and the Israeli right wing, what Hamas’s 2017 charter reveals about its political goals, why the right of return is sacred for many Palestinians (and what it means in practice), how the leadership vacuum is a “core question” for Palestinians, why democratic elections for Palestinians are the first step toward continuing negotiations in the future and more. Book Recommendations: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani Light in Gaza edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing and Mike Merryman-Lotze Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. Here are two thoughts I believe need to be held at once. That Hamas's attack on
0:28.0	10-7 was heinous, was murder on a mass scale was unforgivable.
0:33.0	And also that Hamas needs to be understood
0:37.0	on its own terms,
0:38.0	in terms of how it sees itself
0:40.0	and how it presents itself to Palestinians.
0:42.0	And I'd say there's been an organized effort to push that ladder project away,
0:47.6	who's been this tendency, particularly after the attacks,
0:50.5	and particularly in Israel and in the West, to say that Hamas is simply evil.
0:54.6	Netanyahu refers to it as Satan.
0:57.6	That all Hamas wants is dead Jews, that it cannot be negotiated with and it must be destroyed. And at the same time we see with the
1:04.6	hostage exchanges and the multi-day ceasefire that Israel does negotiate with Hamas,
1:08.7	that there are things Hamas wants and that at least as have yet Hamas is nowhere near being destroyed, nor is it near being
1:15.6	discredited. There's a poll from early November by the Arab World for Research and Development
1:20.6	Group that found about three quarters of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank
1:25.0	said Hamas is playing a positive role.
1:28.0	About the same number supported Hamas's attacks.
1:31.0	Yes, the poll had a small sample size and yes, it's hard for obvious reasons to do
1:35.8	representative polling among Palestinians right now. But the early evidence is that Hamas
1:40.8	standing has improved, not collapsed,
1:43.0	among Palestinians.
1:45.0	So I asked Tariq Boconi on the show.
	...

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